How to add custom tabs and groups to the interface of MS Office

How to add custom tabs and groups to the interface of MS Office

Interfaces many tools these days have adapted to the ribbon concept. Why? The main reason is convenience, simplicity and speed of operation in these interfaces. The best example of the ribbon interface are all products of MS Office. The interface of any application in the office Suite from Microsoft has several tabs, each tab has several groups, and each group are different commands (functions). By default, the ribbon interface offers a set of tools to configure it. Thus, each user can customize its contents for themselves. In this post we will talk about how to add to the interface of MS Office additional feature tabs.

Note: as an example, you will use MS Word 2013, however, all steps are nearly identical for previous versions of office from MS tools.

Step 1: Click on the «File» button located in the upper left corner.

Step 2: In the left pane, click «Settings» to open the «Word Options».

Step 3: In the «Word Options» select «Customize the ribbon».

Step 4: In the right part of the window you will see the «Customize the ribbon». Click on the «new tab» to add to the interface a new tab. Default inside a new tab is added to the new group. If necessary, you can add more groups – for this purpose the button «Create group».

Step 5: If you want to rename the tab, right-click the mouse on it and click «Rename». In exactly the same way you can rename the group.

Step 6: Using the same context menu you can move a tab/group up or down. For this purpose the right of the bar there are two arrows.

Now let’s go back and see how looks our newly created tab. As you can see, it is empty and does not include teams. Fortunately, you can add them.

Step 7: Again open the «Word Options» and select the group inside the tabs you created. Next, choose the required command in the adjacent pane on the left and click «add» to make it a part of new tab and new group.

I added a few random teams. Now go back and again look at your tab you will see you added to your team.

But if you want one (or more) of the tabs are not visible in the interface, just clear the check box next to it in the list of tabs.

Now you know how to add new tabs, new groups and new teams. So if you feel that the interface lacks something, just follow the instructions, find the missing function and then add it. Success!